


Home for the Summer

by tryslora



Category: Magic University - Cecilia Tan
Genre: Divination, Hand Jobs, M/M, Marijuana, Tarot, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:37:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I just want to go home for the summer.</p><p>It sounds easy, right? And almost every guy does it, like some rite of passage. You graduate high school, go off to college, then come home full of stories to tell about your freshman year while making out with your high school ex-girlfriend.</p><p>Yeah, well, it doesn’t always work that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home for the Summer

**Author's Note:**

> This story is archived here with the permission of Cecilia Tan. This story originally appears in Spellbinding: Tales from the Magic University published by Ravenous Romance, which is an anthology of fanfic for the Magic University series.
> 
> The character of Ash and the world of Magic University belong to Cecilia Tan. Thorne? He's mine. *grins*
> 
> The Tarot deck in this story is the Robin Wood Tarot.

I just want to go home for the summer.

It sounds easy, right? And almost every guy does it, like some rite of passage. You graduate high school, go off to college, then come home full of stories to tell about your freshman year while making out with your high school ex-girlfriend.

Yeah, well, it doesn’t always work that way.

On the surface, everything looks close to perfect. We’re on the beach, and it’s late, sometime near midnight I think. The fire’s burning hot and high, and we’ve got beer and weed, just like we always did last summer before I left. Ella’s half on top of Sam; they’ve got the night off from the Crab Shack where they’ve worked since we graduated, and they’re making the most of it by ignoring the rest of us completely. Cara’s curled across my lap like she always did last summer, which should feel more right than it does.

Thing is, my best friend Ryan’s right there, watching us like a hawk. His ex, Maddie, went out to Caltech last September and hasn’t come home for summer. He and Cara hooked up after me and Maddie left them both behind, and he’s jealous as anything that I’m back.

Or maybe he’s jealous that I got to leave in the first place. It's a small town here, and a lot of folks just settle in and stay. I’m a special case, and if it weren’t for Veritas and copious scholarships, I wouldn’t have left either. But Veritas isn’t exactly the sort of place that takes no for an answer.

It’s not exactly the sort of place I can explain, either.

Cara takes a toke on the joint and holds it out in front of my lips as she leans in to nuzzle my throat. "Anyone catch your eye down at Hahvahd?" She drawls out the word like a stereotypical uptight Bostonian and Ryan laughs.

I try not to think of Alex, of the way his hair flops in his face and the impish sparkle in his eye. It’s just a crush, and totally unrequited, and besides, these guys don’t have any idea I go both ways. But my body tightens and Cara squirms on my lap, probably thinking it's for her. I just barely catch Ryan scowling out of the corner of my eye, so I rush my inhalation of the sweet smoke and pass the joint off to distract him.

Holding my breath in gives me a chance to make it sound like I don't really care when I shrug. "Nah. I mean, there're girls and all around, but none of them were anything special." So maybe I’m trying to make it sound like I got more action than I did. Funny thing is, next year I'll be getting plenty, but it'll all be for coursework when I take a class in Esoterics. Another thing I can't explain, even if I'd love to see their reaction when I say _oh yeah, I get to get off for a grade_. Ranks right up there with when I couldn’t tell Cara why I wouldn’t lose my virginity to her after prom.

Cara shifts, tossing one leg over mine to straddle me, her hand slipping down between us. She presses the heel of her hand against the hard ridge in my jeans and I can't help the groan. She laughs, low and smoky, shrugging off Ryan's hand when he tries to pull her back.

"Did he email you?" she whispers against my throat, dragging her teeth over my skin just like she knows I like it. "Did he tell you what we did with Keith in the cabin when we went skiing last winter? How they both—" she cuts off, nipping my earlobe and giggling when Ryan nudges her, hard enough to unseat her.

Circe's tit, but there's a hot image. The thing about a small town is that I know exactly who she means by Keith, and he's a hot guy. I can see it in my mind, clear as a bell, Ryan and Keith with Cara between them, making her moan…

"Time to take a walk, Care-bear." Ryan's voice is a low growl, and Cara just laughs as she stands up and wraps herself around him instead of me. He looks down at me, and I spread my hands and shrug. Fine, whatever, be that way. Leave me here, hard and aching, while you go screw my ex-girlfriend in some dark, lonely corner of the beach.

I realize then that Ella and Sam have wandered off, too, and it's just me, the bonfire, and a cooler of beer and another joint to be lit. So I do, lying back and staring at the flames as I smoke. I can taste the fire, softly metallic, burning the back of my tongue like habañeros. When I inhale, it warms my whole body.

It's not much of a surprise when the visions start. I'd say it's my specialty, but what kind of specialty is it to see things that don't mean anything? I've never made a prophecy, never had something come true. But every time I get anywhere near something mind-altering, even if it’s not hallucinogenic, there they are, all around me. It's almost a comfort now, like finding the place where I belong. I settle in and let it wash over me as I take another toke.

The flames slip higher, taller than my head if I were standing up. The edges fan out, and the top goes slender, like the head of a bird staring down at me, faintly disapproving. There's a girl inside the flames, naked, her arms raised, letting the flames lick over her skin. She changes, each lick of the flames replacing her skin cell by cell, turning female to male, pale blonde hair to something shorter and colored the light brown of sand in the shadows. I've never actually seen him naked, but I'm still damned sure that if I did, that's what he'd look like.

I'm alone, and vision!Alex is staring at me with that quirky grin, like he's about to drag me off to do something fun. And he's naked and I can't help but react. I unzip my jeans, pushing the fly wide so I can reach in, idly stroking myself through my boxers as he watches me. "Dare you," I murmur to the air around me, and the hallucination responds.

Vision!Alex slides his hand down to wrap around his own erection, fingers sliding from root to tip as his gaze holds mine. Yes. This. I shove my boxers out of the way, down enough to get my cock out so I can echo his motion. My eyes lull closed as I groan softly, hand rolling over the head before I stroke down again.

When I look again, flames lick over Alex's body like a lover, pleasuring him until his head falls back, his body arching, and he disappears with his orgasm, rewritten by the fire as if he were never there. The image changes; the man appearing within the flames is shorter and has a bit stockier frame, eyes bright and long red hair tousled as if he just woke up.

When he leaps up and out from the fire, tumbling through the air to land in a crouch beside me, I scuttle backwards. I'm half lying on the sand, my cock waving in the air as if to say hello to this stranger. "Who are you?" I blurt.

"Thorne." He grins, and if he thinks there's anything odd about this meeting, he doesn't say it. Instead he just turns and flops down next to me. "Nice bonfire. We couldn't manage to get anything decent built, so they're all back there roasting marshmallows -- do you know how hard it is to find vegan marshmallows? -- over this teeny little flame. Pretty pathetic, really. You?"

"I don't have any marshmallows."

He laughs, and it's the kind of sound that has joy in it. Pure joy, not drug-induced or soured by circumstance. High on life or something. "No, I can see that you're not roasting marshmallows." He nudges my shoulder with his. "Name?"

Oh, that. "Ash." I try to tuck myself away as subtly as I can manage, but I'm too hard to actually fit back in my jeans, and being interrupted hasn't helped it go down as much as I'd think it would. I just tug my jeans back up, leaving the fly open. "And actually, I'm smoking and hallucinating." And I figure, _why not?_ and hold out the joint. "Join me?"

He holds up a hand, motioning towards me. "No thanks. I'm pretty straight-edge – you can thank my dad for that. But go on, I'm not going to freak out and tell you that you need to stop. Mind if I steal one of those beers, though?"

"Sure, go ahead." I take one last toke and stare at the fire, willing the vision back, but all I see are flames and Thorne crawling around it to drag the cooler closer so he can dig out something cold.

He flops onto the sand next to me, lying back to look up at the moon and stars overhead. "See anything interesting?"

I look at him stretched out there, one arm pillowed behind his head, his chest bare in the hot summer night except for some tattoos. I don’t know if it’s _interesting_ , but it’s not bad to look at.

"In the fire?" he adds, and I flush and look back at the flames.

"Some girl I don't know, then some guy I do know." And I can't say why I'm telling Thorne this except that I don't know him at all, and he has no idea I'm talking about something real. After having been so silent about my life for the past week, this anonymity is freeing.

"Which one were you—" he gestures at my cock, which is, annoyingly enough, still hard. "Or wait, that's a personal question, which is rude. Strike that, unless you want to tell me about it."

I'm starting to wonder if I'm still hallucinating, because I don’t think there are people outside of Veritas who are actually like this, totally open and accepting of sex and its various permutations. People here aren’t, that's for sure, and not even Dad ever really seemed to be. But he turned his back on the magical world as much as he could, after losing Mom, so I barely knew the basics when I got to Veritas as it was. I mean, we kept secrecy, and he taught me the basics, but he wasn’t interested in traveling to meet up other magical people socially. Took me the first month of college not to freak out about how open things were, then once I met Alex, it took me another couple of months not to freak out over how open-minded I apparently was, too. Still haven’t had the guts to act on any of it, or the chance.

Thorne doesn't seem to care if I answer or not. "Do you see things in the fire all the time?" He rolls over on his side, head propped on one hand to watch me.

"Sometimes. This one started out like it wanted to mean something, but it never does." And if Thorne's just another hallucination, talking to him like this doesn't matter. And the words start pouring out, because if this were Cara or Ryan, I couldn't even say this much without them wondering what was going on. "There was this girl, standing there, her arms outstretched like the flame was her lover, and this bird hovering over her. Then she turned into Alex." I've never told anyone about that, but it's not like Thorne's going to somehow tell Alex, right?

He doesn't even look like he cares. He's sitting up, digging into the pockets of his shorts until he finds something. He pulls out a cardboard box, green and beaten up, bound with a bright orange hair tie. He slips the tie free, using it to yank the long strands back from his own face, then opens the box to spill cards into his hands.

Whoa. Tarot. Now I'm sure I'm still hallucinating, because cards and Alex go together. Maybe I’m passed out and things are all muddled up in my head?

Thorne flips through the deck until he holds one card up. I have to lean in close to see it in the flickering light from the flames, but, "Yeah, that's pretty much what I saw." The girl’s standing in a cauldron of flame, her arms outstretched and she’s naked as a jaybird. The bird’s made of flames behind her, and it almost looks disapproving, but her expression is all joy. “ You some kind of a gypsy?” I ask.

He laughs and tucks the card back into the deck, then holds it out to me. "Well, I did spend the last year traveling around, and I'm on the road tonight between Portland and Boston, so yeah, in that way of thinking, maybe I am. Go on, shuffle. I'll read for you."

I shuffle with care; he probably thinks this is some kind of party trick, but I've seen cards used and used well. Not this deck in particular, with the green and white knotwork on the back, but I know to respect Tarot. It's one of those things that's slipped out of the magical world and is used by mundanes who don't know what they've got. Like Thorne. If he's real.

I cut the deck without him having to ask and hand it back to him, and he lays out three cards in front of us. The first shows a girl with long blond hair; a crystalline wand in her hand is raised to the sky, shooting off energy in all directions.

"You," he says, tapping the card.

"I'm a guy," I remind him, which is obvious. "And it's just Ash, not Ashley, before you get any ideas."

"I figured." He grins. "From one wood to another. I'm named for my uncle – he was Hawthorne, but I'm just Thorne. Are your parents hippie pagans like my grandfamily?"

I don't want to talk about my parents, and I have no idea why they picked this name. It should mean something to me by now, and maybe if Mom had been around after I was seven, it would. But it doesn't. "All right, so you say it’s me. What’s it mean then, being upside down and all?"

He turns his focus back to the cards, almost serious. "That's exactly what it means. You were this fun-loving kid, but something turned your world on its head. You probably made some mistakes, maybe did some pranks that weren't a good idea."

I was twelve when I finally got angry at the world for taking Mom. That's when I fell in with Ryan and the others. We were thirteen for our first beers, fourteen for our first weed. I relax a little, trying to sit more comfortably, crossing my legs. We’re close enough that my knee brushes his as we both hunch over the cards, but Thorne doesn’t seem to mind. "Yeah. You could say that. And the dude in the cloak with the swords?" The picture on the card shows him hunched over, the swords hidden under his cloak as he skulks over the number seven.

"You're feeling betrayed right now." He nudges a strand of hair out of his face. "Not right this second, but overall, here. Being here. Why are you here?"

"I like the beach."

He levels a look at me, green eyes . "Not here here. But here. Old Orchard Beach here."

"I grew up here, and it's summer, so where else would I go but home?" I try to make it sound like it doesn't matter, but I'm finally figuring out that yeah, it really does. "Except I hate it, and all I want to do is get back to school. People there are more like family than the ones I grew up with."

His shrug brushes against my shoulder. "Why not go back?"

"No place to live." And I don't really want to watch Alex and Jeannie. I can't begrudge him that, and she's cute, and they looked like maybe it'd work out. But he's got her, and if he doesn't have her, there's always Kyle because I've wondered what was going on between them sometimes. And you'd think that thought would finally deflate my body, but it's amazing how visual my mind is, and how bright some of those fantasies I had of watching the two them are. I flush and I'm glad everything's already rosy from the fire so Thorne can't tell. "What about the third?"

Thorne grins. "You can take that one of two ways. Either you're going to meet a lover, or, it's me. It's my card, anyway."

I look from the card to Thorne, and back at the card again. The knight rides a seahorse and doesn't look a thing like the man sitting next to me, but I have absolutely no doubt that he's telling the truth and he's a cup. He'd be a Cam if he were magical, I'm sure of it.

"Is this a scam?" I laugh a little at the idea, and nudge him. "Where you offer me a reading trying to get me into bed?"

"I am not the one who had my dick in my hand on the beach," Thorne points out.

"I thought I was alone and you were a hallucination," I remind him.

"Who says I'm not?" He reaches over, fingertips just barely skimming down my hip, brushing against the exposed inner part of my thigh where I never did manage to put myself completely back together.

My cock betrays my interest, twitching next to his hand. If he's a hallucination, it's the best one I've ever had. The pads of his fingers press against my skin, calloused and rough. I can smell sweat and a faint hint of spicy cologne, and strawberries whenever his hair gets close to my nose as he leans in. "Why are you here?"

"I saw your fire and my Dad taught me to be a fire flipper, because it was an important part of his courtship of my Dad," he says. His fingers stray further, hand closing around the base of my cock; my breath shudders in my throat. I don't know quite what to say to that, but I keep talking. It seems important that I keep talking.

"The deck. Why do you have Tarot cards in your shorts?"

"Doesn't everyone pull prophecy out of their ass?" he laughs. I try to give him a look but I’m sure it fails because all I can think right now is that I’m hard, and he’s touching me, and nothing else is happening. Yet. "Seriously, I have them because I brought them out earlier and didn't get to put them back in the bus before I started walking along the beach."

“Why--” I shift my hips, silently asking for the first time for him to do something with that touch, and he grins at me. His first pull on my cock is rough, too dry, and he pulls away to spit in his palm before doing it again. I groan at the slick touch, thrusting into it. Talk. Need to talk, words still spilling out. “I haven’t seen Tarot since school. Feels like--” My head falls back, eyes closing as I arch into his hand. “...like going home,” I finish hoarsely.

“Maybe that’s why I still had them,” Thorne says, voice low. “Fate.”

“I don’t believe in fate.”

“Choice?” he asks, with a soft laugh.

I open my eyes and he’s there, close enough to touch. But I’m leaning on my hands, and it traps me there, which doesn’t stop him from leaning in. His lips brush against mine, then his mouth moves to my throat, sucking at the skin. I cry out softly, glad I left my shirt behind long ago because of the heat.

“If fate-- if it’s all fate--” I struggle to find words to make sense of this, every stroke of his hand seeming to pull my brains away. “Wouldn’t I know by now where I fit? I-- never had a choice. Had to go to--” I stop just before I say Veritas, letting the low groan escape instead. “Don’t stop that.”

“Ash.” His voice is a hoarse whisper, a warm breath against my chest, skittering over my skin. “Spiritual. Grounding.”

I don’t know where he’s going with this and I can’t find enough focus to follow, his words sinking into my mind to be absorbed without coherence. “Can’t-- can’t be both.” His mouth moves down my chest, and I give up, letting my grip on the sand go as I collapse backwards, thrusting hard into his hand. I know where his mouth is heading, but I don’t have the patience to wait for it, don’t have the capability to stop myself. My balls tighten, my body bowing as I lose control, giving in to the orgasm.

His lips brush mine, faintly salty, as he stretches out next to me. His hand is sticky where it lies against my chest, and I think that we could go into the water and wash off. But I don’t want to break this spell and figure out whether he’s real or not. It’s better to just let it happen.

“Feeling better?” he asks.

“Physically? Yeah.” Like the bones have been yanked out of my body and left me limp on the beach. I open my eyes to see him peering down at me, a quirky grin lighting his expression. “Emotionally? Not so much. My best friends are all off with each other, and there isn’t a place for me here anymore. But there isn’t a place for me back at school, either.”

He draws lazy patterns on my chest with his finger. “This is your home. Shouldn’t there always be a place for you here?”

“There should but... we’re really different. So different that I can’t tell anyone about it.” It’s the closest I’ll come to explaining about magical versus mundane. “We live in totally different worlds now. And I thought I was looking forward to seeing Cara so much -- she’s my ex-girlfriend -- but now it’s like... I feel like an alien.”

Thorne goes silent, looking past me at the flames, and I turn my head as well. I see Vision!Alex crouched in the dying fire. One eyebrow arches, and he smiles at me before the flames lick him away. As he disappears, Thorne’s hand flattens against my chest, and he pats me once.

“Did you see--” I start to ask, but I’m not sure he’s listening. It makes me wonder, though, from all these little things, whether he’s magical too. But how do you keep secrecy and ask at the same time? Besides, I’m not sure I really want to know.

“If you love someone enough, the differences don’t matter. And if the differences matter that much, maybe love isn’t enough,” he says thoughtfully. He’s looking right at me, but I don’t know if he sees me, a strange faraway look in his eyes. I’ve seen that look, on Dad when he’s in the shop making furniture, when the creation has taken his sense away. He pats my chest again. “I have to get back to the guys. You should draw a card to think about.”

He grabs a discarded towel and scrubs his hands clean before he hands me the deck, fanning it out. I take one card without trying to second guess why I’m doing it, and hand it back to him. The light from the fire is almost gone, but I can still see the woman sitting there, blindfolded, two swords crossed against her shoulders. The moon shines high overhead, and the water behind her looks rough and dangerous. “What’s it mean?”

“It’s where you are right now,” he tells me. “You’re a grounding influence, Ash. Caught between heaven and earth, as spiritually huge as Ygg, but bound to both sides. You’re caught in a precarious balance, and you already know what you need to do.” His smile quirks. “If you don’t believe in fate, then it’s time to make a choice.”

A choice. Home or Veritas. Mundane or magic.

The brush of his lips against my forehead catches me by surprise, then he’s standing. “Fire flipping,” he says, “is a difficult thing to do, but a terribly important skill to learn. As long as you always use it for the forces of good.” I barely blink and he’s tumbling with a laugh over the flames and into the darkness. The light from the fire is still enough to obscure him, and by the time I scramble to my feet, I can’t see him in the darkness down the beach.

I’m alone again with the fading fire, a cooler full of beer, and no more weed. And I feel kind of right about it.

I push my jeans down, shoving them over my feet to leave them and my boxers in a pile on the sand so I can run into the water. The chill of the ocean makes me shout. But I know what I have to do. It’s time to wash the past away. The morning will be soon enough for me to go home for real, back to Cambridge.


End file.
